Morning Wire - Trump’s Sanctuary City Warning & DEI Department Purge | 1.23.25

Episode Date: January 23, 2025

Trump warns state and local officials to stay out of ICE’s way, Senate Democrats are stalling on Trump’s cabinet nominees, and the federal government says goodbye to DEI. Get the facts first with Morning Wire. Lumen: Head to http://lumen.me/WIRE for 20% off your purchase. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

President Trump is putting state officials on notice, warning them not to interfere with his deportation operation. ICE is doing their job, and they're prioritizing just as the president said they would, and they're going to continue every day. Will sanctuary cities cooperate, and how has the public's opinion shifted? I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire, editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's Thursday, January 23rd, and this is Morning Wire. As President Trump revs up his administration, Democrats are slamming the break. on his cabinet confirmations. We tried to cooperate with the Democrats.

The cooperation is up and forthcoming. So I guess it's going to be the hard way. And the federal employee purge has begun with DEI agencies and staffers first on the chopping block. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. Hey guys, producer Brandon here.

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dot me slash wire to get 20% off your purchase. Thank you, Lumen, for sponsoring this episode. The Trump administration wasted no time this week in implementing the president's immigration agenda. Just days after Trump took office, hundreds of illegal aliens have been arrested, and U.S. troops have been dispatched to the southern border. Here to talk about the furious pace set by Trump on immigration is Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce. So, Tim, we've seen a constant stream of news on immigration since Trump took office on Monday. What's the latest?

One of the big items that dropped yesterday was that immigration officials have already detained more than 300 illegal aliens for deportation. Here's Borders R. Tom Homan talking about that. on Fox News. Right now, as we said repeatedly, in the present trust been clear, we're concentrating on the worst first, the public safety threats, and that's security threats. And just yesterday in the last 24 hours, I arrested over 308, 308 serious criminals. Some of them were murderers, some of them were rapists, some of them raped a child, some were a sexual cell of a child. So even before his cabinet is in place, Trump's immigration agenda is well underway. And it's had an impact, too,

not only on those arrested and deported, but we've seen cases of self-deports by aliens who have left the country voluntarily rather than waiting for ice. We see the impact as well in places such as Chicago's Little Village, commonly referred to as the quote, Mexico of the Midwest. It's known as a bustling shopping district, but recently, foot traffic in Little Village has plummeted by half. Wow. So it sounds like an aggressive start to Trump's second term. What about the self-designated sanctuary jurisdictions? How are they responding? Yeah, there were quite a few defiant statements made during the transition by local leaders of these jurisdictions, and many will presumably stand by them, but some have softened. For instance, the Denver mayor just a few weeks ago was threatening to deploy police to stop federal immigration agents from entering the city.

He's now saying the city will work with immigration officials, at least to deport violent criminals. This comes as the Department of Justice has directed federal prosecutors to look into local officials who try to get a nicest way. But perhaps as persuasive as the DOJ, recent polls say that Americans back Trump's deportation agenda. Listen to this clip of CNN poll analyst Harry Inton explain. There's real uniformity here. That's what I really think you see. You see real uniformity. Deported all immigrants who are here illegally. 55% of New York Times. Marquette, 64%. CBS News, 57%. ABC News with a slightly different question, 56%. So what you're seeing essentially here is a very clear indication that a majority of

of Americans, in fact, when they're asked this blunt question, which I believe gets at the underlying feelings, do in fact want to deport all immigrants who are here illegally. There's no arguing with these different numbers because they're all essentially the same across four different pollsters. Well, and we've seen a huge shift in opinion take place over just the last four years, obviously dovetailing with unprecedented levels of illegal immigration. Now, what action is Trump taking on the border itself? Trump has already made good on his promise to use the military to help secure the border. It's not clear how many troops will end up on the border, but according to CNN, the Pentagon has directed an initial wave of about 1,500 troops to assist border personnel. Now, that's on top

of about 2,200 troops that were already stationed at the border to help out with logistical and bureaucratic work while border agents do the actual enforcement. According to CNN, up to 10,000 troops could be sent to the border by President Trump. Well, this was the number one issue for a lot of voters, and Trump is acting on that mandate. Tim, thanks. for reporting. Thanks for having me. As Marco Rubio gets to work at the State Department, the rest of Trump's cabinet picks are still working their way towards confirmation, while some are being stalled by Democrats. Here are the latest on that front as Daily Wire Deputy Managing Editor Tim Rice-A-Tem, so there's been lots to watch on the cabinet beat. What's the

latest with Trump's nominees? Well, John, after a pretty smooth week of hearings, Democrats are starting to drag their feet on confirming Trump's nominees. Pam Bondi, Trump's pick to be Attorney General was supposed to go up for a vote yesterday. But on Tuesday, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee pushed the hearing for at least a week. They didn't give a reason why, and they don't have to. Any member of the committee can place a hold on any agenda item for a week at minimum. Now, this was a little bit surprising. Bondi had a few clashes with Democrats during her hearing, but otherwise it went pretty smooth. But it seems like because hearings went so smooth, Democrats are now trying delay tactics to keep Trump from confirming his nominees. Democrats have tried on

numerous occasions to extend questioning beyond the scheduled hearing day. And these delays are starting to add up. By this time in 2009, Barack Obama already had eight cabinet secretaries confirmed. And by this point in 2017, Trump had three cabinet secretaries installed, including his secretaries of defense and homeland security. It's certainly a stark contrast there. Speaking of the Defense Department, what's the latest on Pete Hegsef? Well, the legacy media has spent the past few days salivating a new story about Hegsef. NBC was the first to report the story in which

Hegseth's ex-sister-in-law claims that he physically abused his ex-wife. Now, judging from the headlines on NBC, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, you'd think this was a pretty open-and-shut story. There's just one problem. Samantha Hegseth denies that her ex-husband ever abused her. She signed legal documents to that effect, and when reached for comment by NBC, denied it once again. And while the headlines all kind of imply this was Hegsett's ex-wife's sister,

it's actually Hegset's brother's ex-wife. Hegsteth's lawyers have dismissed her as, quote, an anti-Trump far-left Democrat who was divorced from Mr. Hegset's brother and never got along with the Hegset's family. So it doesn't look like this will do much to derail Hegset's road to heading up the Pentagon, but it just shows that he's not out of the woods yet and still has some opposition to his confirmation. Right, as we've reported, Hexseth is facing the hardest journey out of really all of Trump's nominees. Any other nomination news to note?

We have a much lighter hearing schedule this week, and the main event was definitely Tuesday's hearing for Elise Stefani. Trump's pick for ambassador to the United Nations. Stefanik spent the majority of her time talking about China and its influence on the UN, saying specifically that the United States needed to work more with smaller countries to fight Chinese influence in the global South. She also urged lawmakers to exercise caution with the new Syrian government and said that countering Iran would be one of the Trump administration's top priorities. And she spoke out about the UN's role in funding terrorism through its relief and works agency. Trump had cut off American funding to the agency just before Stephanics hearing. We should never tolerate any U.S. taxpayer funds going towards terrorism. As in my question with the ranking member, Shaheen, I was one of the members that voted to defund,

UNRWA. I was one of the leaders in standing for that important appropriations vote, which there is a bipartisan consensus with significant members, Republicans, as well as some Democrats who voted. to defund it. All in all, Stefanic really showed that she knew the ins and outs of the UN and seems poised to be pretty easily confirmed.

All right, so a good hearing for Stefonic and at least some signs of progress on an otherwise slow moving week. Tim, thanks for reporting. Thanks for having me. President Trump has signed an executive order intended to purge diversity, equity, and inclusion employees from the federal government.

It's part of his larger anti-Dei agenda. Here with more on the president's action against DEI is Daily Wire investigative report Spencer Lindquist. So Spencer, first off, tell us about this memo killing DEI. So that executive order is now being implemented by the Office of Personnel Management, which is sent a memo ordering agency heads to, quote, send a notification to all employees of DEIA offices that they are being placed on paid administrative leave effective immediately, as the agency takes step to close and end all DEIA initiatives,

offices, and programs. The memo also gave agency heads an email template to send to bureaucrats, stating that the DEI actions of the previous administration, quote, divided Americans by race, wasted taxpayer dollars, and resulted in shameful discrimination. Now, this represents a lot of employees, and some of these programs are pretty entrenched. Are they acquiescing or is there a lot of pushback? There's definitely an expectation in the Trump administration that a lot of these agencies will try to keep DEI alive. In order to circumvent this, the memo also instructs agency heads to, quote,

send an agency-wide notice to employees, informing them of the closure and asking employees if they know of any efforts to disguise these programs by using coded or imprecise language. Now, beyond just trying to root out DEI, Trump has also addressed the work-from-home situation that represents a huge portion of government workers even still. What is he saying there? Yeah, that's right. He also signed this order requiring most employees to work in person. The measure on remote work is a significant change from the status quo because only about 50, 50% of all government workers currently work in office every day. About 10% of federal workers have fully remote positions as of right now.

This will be unpopular with the workers, but it has a lot of support from politicians on both sides of the aisle. For example, Governor Glenn Yonkin of Virginia has been pushing for a return to in-person work to boost public transit ridership in northern Virginia to avoid a budget deficit. Likewise, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has for years now pushed the White House for workers to return due to the economic impact of empty buildings and downtown. DC. Here she is back in 2023. The federal government

represents one quarter of D.C.'s pre-pandemic jobs and owns or leases one third of our office space. We need decisive action by the White House to either get most federal

workers back to the office most of the time or to realign their vast property holdings for use by the local government, by non-profit, profits, by businesses, and by any user willing to revitalize it. Trump also reinstated an executive order from his first term called Schedule F, which was implemented in 2020. Employees designated FR career bureaucrats who previously had a lot of protections.

This executive order strips these employees of certain employment protections that make them a very difficult to fire. This is a part of an effort to prevent bureaucrats from stonewalling or undermining Trump's agenda, which was an issue during his first term. The goal is to allow the president to fire those who have a role in the policymaking process. And this could affect nearly 50,000 federal employees. It's something that Russell vote, Trump's pick for Office of Management and Budget supports. Here he is at his confirmation hearing Wednesday. Schedule F is a different classification. It is meant to ensure that the administration of the president has people who are working for him that are actually going to do the policies that he ran

on that he's articulating. And the order states that, quote, there have been numerous well-documented in cases of career federal employees resisting and undermining the policies and directives of their executive leadership. The order now faces a legal challenge from a federal employee union. All right. Well, we're going to keep an eye on the fight over DEI as well as these civil service protections. Spencer, thanks for reporting. Thanks for having me. Hey, thank you for listening this morning. We created this show to bring more balance to the national conversation. If you love our show and stand with that mission, consider subscribing, giving us a five-star rating, and most importantly, sharing our podcast with a friend.

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